1. Field of the Art
The disclosure generally relates to the field of menus for mobile computing devices, for example, mobile telephones.
2. Description of the Related Art
Mobile devices, specifically mobile phone devices, today are ubiquitous. As each new generation of mobile phone devices comes to market more and more functionality is incorporated into that device. To access and navigate the functionality incorporated into a mobile phone device, conventional mobile phones have incorporated linear menus.
Generally, a linear menu is presented with a list of entries corresponding to a function. A user scrolls down through the list of entries, or taps on the item on screen (for touch screens) to minimize the number of UT interactions to access a function. Scrolling, or tapping on the screen requires more interaction from the user and requires the user to rely on visual feedback to ensure they are scrolling or tapping the appropriate place. However, linear menus have significant drawbacks. For example, a user is required to perform a number of physical interactions with their device in order to access a particular menu entry. Another drawback is that desired menu entries may be nested, therefore increasing the number of interactions necessary to reach a particular menu entry. Moreover, such entry may be difficult to locate among the myriad of menus available to the user.
To alleviate some of the drawbacks of conventional linear menus, device manufactures have incorporated dedicated physical buttons on their devices. When selected, the dedicated button executes the functionality associated with that dedicated button. Such hard wired solutions provide immediate access to common functional tasks thereby reducing the number of interactions and easing access to such function. However, this configuration too has a number of drawbacks. For example, as devices become smaller in form factor, the amount of available real estate on the device in which to put most commonly accessed functionality is significantly reduced.
Moreover, as users become more sophisticated, the number of dedicated functional buttons a user desires increases so that the limited real estates results in omissions that ultimately decreases user productivity. Further, increased user sophistication also results in different users having different views on functionality that they find most useful, and thus, most commonly accessed. To provide each different user with a different set of dedicated application buttons causes a significant increase in manufacturing cost and complexity such that it is impractical.
Thus, the art lacks a mechanism to provide quick access and flexible customization to access a variety of functional operations in devices, particularly those having small form factors.